Penny Black #109 and Donkey Smiles for Michelle

Morning everyone - here we are again for another Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Many thanks to everyone who joined in last week's colour theme challenge - you all really got into the swing of celebrating 4th July with our American friends. Don't forget to check whether you have won any of the four fabby prizes that were on offer last week.

Talking of American friends ... before I go any further I would like to mention that I have made this week's card for Michelle aka Donkey Smiles - many of you may know she suffered a terrible accident just recently. Michelle left me some really lovely and encouraging comment when I first started blogging, and although with the explosion of blogs that has happened over the past 2 years we have kinda lost touch, I was really sorry to hear about what has happened. A Spoon Full of Sugar blog is currently hosting a card drive to flood her with best wishes from around the crafty world so I didn't hesitate to join in and I hope you will too. So this is sending love and hugs to Michelle and hoping she will make a good recovery and be feeling a whole lot better soon.

Anyhoo ... onto this week's challenge at Penny Black Saturday ... and we have a wonderful sketch for you from our teamie Beth.

Once again we also have some fantastic prizes ... this week we have one from our fab new sponsor
which is this adorable stamp "Mimi and Friend"

... and on top of that we also have a $20 store voucher from another billiant regular sponsor


So why wait?? I suggest you get straight to it!

The other DT members have worked some magic with Beth's sketch .. here is my interpretation. I really wanted to use this image which necessitated that the oval be a bit tipsy - but I think my li'l mouse is still quite sober lol!

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "Cheesecake Wish" (1652J) coloured with Promarkers and Copics, edged with Colorbox Queue ink, and decorated with Star Dust Stickles;
Sentiment: Hero Arts;
Papers: My Mind's Eye "Quite Contrary" (free with this month's Cardmaking 7 papercraft magazine);
Supplies: large sparkly flower by Prima ( I won this from Jane's fortnightly SSS flower candy - thanks! :-) ); pearls, ribbon and lace from my stash;
Tools: large classic ovals and large classic scalloped ovals nestabilities; Marianne D Creatables swirls from ribbon die set; Martha Stewart "doily lace" edge punch.

Challenges:

Spoon Full of Sugar - Sending Donkey Smiles ( card drive for Michelle)

Penny Black at Allsorts #1 - A Burst of Summer Colour (2nd entry)

Have a great weekend, and can't wait to see your interpretations of the sketch !

Edited to add:

Sylvia from Minnesota was kind enough to compliment my colouring of my mouse, and to ask which Promarkers I used. Unfortunately Sylvia doesn't have her own blog nor an email address on her profile, so i can't answer personally. But here's the info in case you happen to visit again :-)

Although I have recently started collecting Promarkers for non-waterbased colouring, I have struggled to find the right shades for colouring fur. I have taken advice from various other crafty friends and was also influenced by a wonderful LotV colouring tutorial ... and I concluded I needed to introduce a few Copic Ciaos. I went out to buy on the basis of the LotV tutorial, but of course the local stockist didn't have all in stock so I started ot improvise.

The shades I have for colouring fur are (going from lightest to darkest) E51, E53, E31, E43. On the mouse in this post I definitely used the first three of these, and maybe a little of the E43. My method was to start with the palest colour , and then work outwards applying each darker shade, and then back inwards colouring over what I'd done working back towards the lightest colour. I finished off with blending the palest into the white card with my Promarker blender pen. For the blush in the cheeks I think I used Promarkers "Baby Pink" blended into "Ivory", and for the ears a bit of Copic RV10. I'm still at early days with practising colouring with pens so it was lovely to be asked :-)